The Concert - Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

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43. Artist Diploma Edition Apr 01, 2008

Show notes

Bach: Partita No. 3 in E Major for solo violin, BWV 1006
Schumann: Sonata No. 1 in A minor for violin and piano, Op. 105

Boston, where the Gardner Museum is located, is a big college town. And so every April, we tip our hats to Boston’s student population with a series of concerts by some of the top young musicians enrolled in New England Conservatory’s Artist Diploma program, one of the most prestigious music training programs in the country. This week on the podcast we will listen to two Artist Diploma violinists who have performed here in recent years. First, we’ll hear Bach’s third partita for solo violin. Though neither as virtuosic nor as familiar as the second partita, the third has all the sprightly energy of a dance, with its menuets, gigues and bourées. Next is Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 1. The sonata was written relatively late in Schumann’s compositional career, after the bulk of his chamber music works, and it is evident upon listening that, though it is his first work for this particular instrumentation, the music is written by a more experienced hand.

42. Practice Makes Perfect Mar 15, 2008

Show notes

Mozart: Violin Sonata No. 23 in D Major, K. 306
Haydn: String Quartet No. 59 in G minor, Op. 74 (“Rider”)

For most contemporary composers, writing a dozen string quartets would be a fairly large feat. Since about Beethoven’s time, and since composers have been writing more for themselves than for a patron or church, the sheer volume of individual compositional output has, for the most part, shrunk. Today, we take a listen to a few pieces from before that time: Mozart’s 23rd violin sonata and Haydn’s 59th string quartet. Haydn wrote 68 numbered string quartets. As a court-employed musician, he composed new pieces for every house concert, soiree and dance party the count cared to throw. Before the Haydn, we’ll hear Mozart’s 23rd violin sonata. In this later sonata, Mozart began to branch out a bit, abandoning the short, two-movement form in use in earlier classical music, and instead writing a more expansive, three-movement piece.

41. Schumann at the Piano Mar 01, 2008

Show notes

Schumann: Arasbeske for piano in C Major, Op. 18
Schumann: Piano Trio No. 2 in F Major, Op. 80

All at once, in 1840, Robert Schumann began writing songs by the dozen. Later called the “Liederjahr,” or “year of song,” this period of extraordinary productivity was brought on, many have speculated, by the composer’s joy in finally winning the hand of his new wife, Clara. In this week’s installment of “The Concert,” we’ll hear a couple of examples of Schumann’s music for his wife’s instrument, the piano. Perhaps these pieces were also inspired, in a different way, by Clara.

40. Classic Beethoven Feb 15, 2008

Show notes

Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 5 in C minor, Op. 10, No. 1
Beethoven: String Quartet No. 9, Op. 59, No. 3 (“Razumovsky”)

This week, we’re listening to classic Beethoven, a piece for solo piano and another for string quartet. A relatively early sonata, Beethoven’s opus 10, the 15-minute piano sonata on this program nonetheless contains hints of the composer’s stylistic hallmarks: questioning themes (though, here, often without the requisite “answers”); adventurous development sections, sometimes traveling far afield harmonically and melodically; and a vibrant, striving finale. After the piano sonata, we jump into a later string quartet. Building on the ideas heard in the earlier sonata, this quartet begins on particularly rocky harmonic ground, with an intriguing introduction that meanders through several remote keys before finally landing, part-way through the exposition, in C Major.

39. More than Words Feb 01, 2008

Show notes

Vivaldi: Flute Concerto, Op. 10, No. 1
Dvořák: Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81

The first piece on today’s program falls into the category of “program music,” meaning that the notes follow a set “program” or story. And this music delivers: full of vigorous, rushing passages and endless motion, conjuring a storm-tossed ocean. Dvorak’s piano quintet, on the other hand, evokes many emotions without giving name to any of them. Actually his second quintet—he was reputedly dissatisfied with his first—the piece has won a place among the most-loved Romantic-era quintets, and it’s easy to hear why. Warm, lush melodies, colorful Eastern European elements and delicious rhythms—two against three, three against four—make it a great piece to sink your teeth into, even without a storyline.

38. Something Different Jan 15, 2008

Show notes

Michael Tilson Thomas: Grace
Strauss: Sonata for violin and piano in E-flat Major, Op. 18

This week on “The Concert,” we’re listening to pieces that reveal different sides of the composers who wrote them, music you might not expect. The meat of the program is Richard Strauss’s violin sonata in E-flat Major. This sonata, written at roughly the same time as the grand, well-loved orchestral “Don Juan,” contains that same sort of melody and lusciousness in miniature. Before the sonata, we’ll hear a newer piece, American composer Michael Tilson Thomas’s charming “Grace,” a jazzy song, intimate in scale, but full of affection. Written in honor of Leonard Bernstein’s 70th Birthday, it seems a fitting homage to that great American composer, a lover of song.

37. Modern Heritage, Part II Jan 01, 2008

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Bartók: Sonata for violin and piano No. 2 in C Major
Hemphill: The Moat and the Bridge
Hemphill: One Atmosphere

This week on “The Concert,” we return to music by Béla Bartók and Julius Hemphill, listening to another set of 20th century works based on folk music and blues. Less traditional in form, Bartók’s second sonata is in just two movements, rather than the standard three, the first movement full of Schoenbergian chromaticism and the second once again infused with folk dance rhythms. After the Bartók, we hear two pieces by Julius Hemphill, infused with the blues but incorporating classical as well as jazz instruments.

36. Modern Heritage Dec 15, 2007

Show notes

Bartók: Sonata for violin and piano No. 1 in C-sharp minor, Op. 21
Hemphill: The Hard Blues

Most people have strong musical memories from their childhood: the songs their parents listened to, the music they grew up singing or playing. In this week’s episode, we’ll listen to two composers who took their early roots in music, Hungarian folk songs and the blues respectively, and jumped off to create compositions inspired by, but quite different from, their musical beginnings. Bartók was fascinated by Hungarian folk music, and spent much of his early compositional life collecting, transcribing and setting traditional folk songs. Hemphill was a real revolutionary as a saxophone player, known for his writing for saxophone quartet and, in this case, sextet. The blues tune here definitely has a foot in tradition, but it’s also audaciously modern.

35. Night and Day Dec 01, 2007

Show notes

Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 20 in G Major, Op. 49, No. 2
Beethoven: Sonata for violin and piano No. 7 in C minor, Op. 30, No. 2 (“Eroica”)

On this week of “The Concert,” we’ll listen to two sonatas by Beethoven, one for piano solo, and another for violin and piano, that seem about as different as night and day. Written around the same time as Beethoven’s infamous “Heiligenstadt Testament,” an anguished letter about his worsening deafness, the violin sonata’s grim mood is often interpreted as a direct reflection of Beethoven’s sorrow over the loss of his hearing. Before that, though, something much cheerier: Beethoven’s piano sonata number 20, opus 49 number 2, played by pianist Paavali Jumppanen. Though written several years before the violin sonata, this piece wasn’t actually published until a few years later, when Beethoven’s brother apparently sent it off to a publisher without Beethoven’s knowledge. Interestingly enough, though, he thought well enough of this sonata that he used the finale as the basis for a movement of his eighth violin sonata, a curious connection between the two seemingly different pieces on our podcast today.

34. Mozartean Dialogues Nov 15, 2007

Show notes

Mozart: Piano Sonata in F Major, K. 533/K. 494
Mozart: Piano Trio No. 2 in G Major, K. 496

It could be said that all art is about communicating, but in music the idea of dialogue is particularly important, especially in the music of Mozart. One thinks right away of his great opera finales, with characters talking to each other, over each other and to themselves in a wonderful cacophony. But Mozart encapsulates this same essential dialogue in instrumental music, too, and even in solos. In the first movement of the piano sonata on today’s program, the allegro, Mozart uses a lot of counterpoint, and you can hear the exchange of ideas between high and low voices. In the piano trio, we hear the beginnings of the type of chamber music which would come to dominate, in which all players are equal partners in the music-making.

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